Took SEC504: Difference between in-class and on-demand
sec_jester
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in GIAC
I recently took SEC504 in Boston with Adrien as the teacher. The class was very so-so, and people (myself included) lost interested by the third day. I was surprised as the reviews from this class seem to be really good.
Now that I am listening to the audio files of the class, I think I know why. I have maybe gotten to the second day of audio content by John Strand and it is like I am listening to a different class. John mentions things in class that Adrien didn't. John spends time on certain items, brings them up in context and even recommends follow up material. I got none of this from my class.
This is my first class from SANS that was not taught by someone who made the class, and maybe that is the issue I am running into. I understand there is probably no recourse at this time and I just have to make due to with the books and audio files.
Now that I am listening to the audio files of the class, I think I know why. I have maybe gotten to the second day of audio content by John Strand and it is like I am listening to a different class. John mentions things in class that Adrien didn't. John spends time on certain items, brings them up in context and even recommends follow up material. I got none of this from my class.
This is my first class from SANS that was not taught by someone who made the class, and maybe that is the issue I am running into. I understand there is probably no recourse at this time and I just have to make due to with the books and audio files.
Comments
The exams come from the course books not necessarily what is said...the paragraphs below the slides are important.
There's certainly more than just teaching the course material, John has considerable experience and is able to keep things interesting with stories of experiences he had on various contracts, usually reinforcing the material he's trying to teach you. I listened to him at a lecture at my last SANS event, it was standing room only all the way out into the hallway. He's a very popular instructor. Classes he teaches often have at least hundred students attending. The recording Eric Conrad made are good too. I only wish Lenny could make the Reverse malware engineering lectures as good. I guess there is an advantage of having a different instructor teach than who is on the MP3's to get a different view point. That's something I didn't get for SANS 610. Not to bash Lenny, but he's certainly not on the John Stand level of teaching.
I guess part of the problem is there is a LOT of material to cover in a 600 level course, there isn't extra time to get side tracked into a story of his adventures. Often classes ran a half hour over the scheduled time, and one day it was past 6pm before he stopped. And I think we only finished one book cover to cover, the other books had 20 to 30 pages of material left we just didn't have time to get to. Lenny said there were just more exercises to re-enforce what we learned in class, but $100 bets at least some material from those pages will be on the exam.
Does this imply he can also talk people into jumping off cliffs?
You make a good point, I just assumed all SANS instructors were top notch, but that doesn't appear to be the case. I was talking to an instructor and he said the compensation SANS pays instructors hasn't increased in several years, they even get a rate cut if not enough students attend. Make me seriously wonder how they continue to attract top experts in the field as instructors. They probably do it for advertising / networking purposes. If you have an incident were you need expert help who you going to call? Someone randomly out of the yellow pages? Or someone who taught you some cyber security classes and does consulting on the side?
The difference was obvious. The poor instructor just read from slides while the great instructor was able to connect the material to real world engagements he was working outside of SANS. Bottom line, I'll never take another class from a professional instructor. The classes are too expensive to risk getting another slide reader - I can read the slides on my own time. I come to SANS to learn how to actually do things, not hear some random guy with no real world experience read me slides...
He spoke very well and knew what he was talking about.
Also, you can literally feel the pride he has in this field of work and he always shared stories to give a better context of the things in the book.
He was amazing.